This years racing forecast – with apologies to Michael Fish

February 11th, 2009

Uncle G predicts some rain, some sun and scattered bouts of happiness.

In other words get your ark ready now.

Walking’s dangerous I tell thee

February 7th, 2009

I came close to taking the bike out today. The surprisingly still around snow was oh so lovely. Took a closer look, conclusion pretty but slippy. Considered the effect a sudden introduction to terra firma would have on my surgically battered shoulder. Dug out the walking boots.

The clouds obliged by letting go of an assortment of snow n’ sleet, the woods were picture book (only slightly let down by the absence of Victorian lamp-posts). No-one in sight. I’d almost convinced myself I was somewhere real and was quite enjoying the ‘walk’. I don’t normally unless there’s a hill to be climbed with a view to be borrowed.

Having mooched a long way across several fields I found myself confronted by cows, not hundreds but enough to warrant the word ‘herd’. I don’t like cows much. I especially don’t like the ones with balls like footballs and rings through their noses. Whilst I stood dithering they clearly decided that I shouldn’t be in their field and definitely not whilst wearing ‘Red’ Goretex and ‘advanced’. I’d like to say I considered playing them at their own game but the one with the ring, the one the size of a small family car, was bringing up the rear. Cue rapid exit via a barbed wire fence into a gap in the hedge.

Admired the traffic on the M25, caught up on some phone calls, wondered whether there was any substance to ‘red rag’s and bulls. Time passed, they lost interest but the bull was still between me and the gate. I did dignified and purposeful for about two seconds before giving in and breaking my no running rule.

Couple of miles further along two rottweilers shoot out of a house and started hurling themselves at the fence alongside the path I’m trying to walk down. They’re working as a team, they’ve had practice. If I advance one races ahead whilst the other guards the rear, I’m trapped between them. I don’t know much about dogs but I reckon that anything that sounds like the soundtrack to The Hound of the Baskervilles is not going to just playfully lick my hand and if ‘they’ can comfortably rest their paws on top of a fence then the fence isn’t high enough. For the second time I broke the no running rule.

My ‘waterproof’ jacket’s torn, my knees hurt.

Random whiffle

January 24th, 2009

I’ve been nagged for months about ‘this’, but thanks (grateful thanks) to Tramadol and (not so gratefully) a duff shoulder have spent most of the last two weeks asleep, so I’ve nothing much to say. Some might say I never have and they’d probably be right.

So here’s some random whiffle taken from a special place elsewhere on the internet.

T – ‘The bang was my drivers side mirror exploding. Wonderful – posh electric one at that’

P – Well the good thing is that it could have been worse, but wasn’t. The odd thing is that is could well have been mirror envy. A little known reaction between cars where one car sees the other car has a mirror with greater and more complex internals in order to simply hold a bit of glass in place, and so commits suicide by exploding their own inferior internals in a sudden and somewhat shocking manner. This phenomenon has also been witnessed in engines made by Ferrari, though there seems to be no visible trigger to cause such violent jealousy they throw their own internals all over the road with alarming regularity.

N – I like this theory do you also believe there’s a small imp like creature with a paintbrush and an easel inside your cameras..

T2 – Only on the old film cameras. Can you imagine how many imps you needed in a Polaroid camera! These modern digidol cameras do away with the easel and paintbrush. They just use a mini etchasketch with a USB port in it.

P – There are 44.8 million of them in my new one… I have yet to give them all names though

J – Christ – have you bought the Hubble telescope??!

Given in…

July 6th, 2008

Not entirely sure how this thing works…